Fragmented Dreams
by Xerxes Glace Hydro
Summary: What a labyrinth his sub-conscience was. The written diagram describing it was nothing but scribbles, to a 'normal' person. Carly attempts to analyze it. Rated T for mentions of sexual indication, and maybe other things.


Today wasn't, initially, unlike any other day. Jack was sitting in his usual spot at the cafe nearby by himself with his coffee. Nothing unusual, Carly had thought as she sat down next to him. The waitress - Stephanie, wasn't it? - seemed rather irritated by this action, but Carly didn't care. She asked for some tea, since the lady was there, and as soon as she left, the reporter locked eyes with Jack. She opened her mouth to speak, until she realized that the blonde's attention hadn't shifted to her when she had taken a seat. No, his attention was elsewhere.

Strangely, Jack's feet were propped up on his chair, a notebook in his lap. Whatever was on the page he was viewing, it puzzled him greatly. It must have been of great importance to him as well, for his concentration didn't break when Carly moved his untouched coffee away from him. She moved it back, and flicked his knee. "Hey, Jack! Hello?"

The former king jumped with the sudden contact, the notebook almost falling off of his legs. He gave an uncharacteristically sheepish grin when he finally noticed Carly. "Oh! Sorry! How long have you been there, Carly?" It was almost cute to see an embarrassed blush creep across his face.

"Not very long," Carly replied. Her "reporter instincts" were fueling her curiosity. "What's that there?" She pointed to the notebook.

"Hm, this?" Jack lifted the notepad, as if gesturing to it. "Oh, it's nothing much. Just something to help sort out my thoughts..."

The young woman crossed her arms. "You look awfully confused. Mind if I take a look?"

Jack shrugged and handed her the tablet. "Go ahead. It doesn't make much sense, though..."

The blonde wasn't kidding. There were nonsensical words, phrases, and numbers scrawled all over the page. She flipped back several pages to find that they, too, were covered in the same ramblings. No wonder Jack appeared to be so bewildered by it. There were lines connecting certain words with multiple phrases and numbers. "What is all of this?"

Jack looked away. "I've been having strange dreams lately..."

"Go on."

The duelist cleared his throat. "I've been having dreams where I'm in a hallway; a dark hallway. There's no one there but me, and the hallway is empty. In every sequence I start walking down the hallway, until I come to a corridor at the end. The contents of the corridor always changes... It's never the same in any of these dreams so far. Once it was filled with nothing but mirrors, and another time there was nothing at all. But it's not the structure of the room that constantly alters - it's what I end up finding in it.

"When the room is empty, I can hear voices - full conversations, at that. Sometimes I can understand them, other times I cannot. And sometimes, there's actually something in the room, like a setting. And a scene plays out. Normally I can hardly make out anything that's happening, but it's all so familiar... I just wish I could remember what it was..."

Upon closer examination, Carly realized there was a trend concerning some of the scribbles. She pointed to the numbers. "Are these dates?"

Jack nodded. "They're the dates of whenever a dream would occur. The arrows point to what I could understand from it."

The lines were arrows, and like Jack said, they pointed to different words. "And what about these?" The reporter moved her finger to some of the phrases that seemed to have developed over time.

"I think they're names," Jack murmured. "I'm not entirely certain, however."

Pride, Yalen, Amai, Zack. Those were the most common. They were also the ones that progressed.

Pride Atlas.

Yalen Enta.

Amai Jack.

Zack Addy.

Akai Pride Atlas.

Zachary Addy.

Amai Jack Atlas.

_Amai Jack Atlas._

While all of the names were repeated numerous times, one in particular stood out the most, namely due to its striking similarity to Jack's own name. Carly was about to ask about it when her eyes drifted to the king's expression. He looked very sick, for one reason or another. The day was abnormally warm - perhaps he was overheated? Against her better judgement, she left him be and returned to the notebook, attempting to make some sort of sense out of the writing on the pages. As she skimmed back and forth over the notes, she caught a glimpse of a dog-eared page, far in the back. Carefully, she flipped to it, trying not to let Jack watch her do it. There were more scribbles, but these were far different.

For one, they were all words or phrases, without dates. The notes appeared to be written by at least four different people, the hand not resembling Jack's own in any way. They were also colour-coded by the writer - either in pink, red, violet, or orange pen. Their messages all had a pattern as well: the red words more often than not contained some sort of sexual indication, in a flirtatious manner, the violet were serious and thought-evoking, the orange seemed very upset and full of longing, and all the pink ever said was "remember" in varying sizes and boldness, as if its persona were steadily lacking in patience. She was startled when the tablet was yanked out of her hand. Jack looked as though he had a fever.

"I'm sorry, Carly, but I'm not feeling well..." he muttered. "I need to leave."

Carly tried to smile, "It's alright, Jack. It was nice seeing you."

He was already gone, a tip left on the table for the waitress. Carly sighed, and pulled out her laptop after ensuring Jack was gone. She pulled up her browser.

"Just to be safe," she reasoned. "It couldn't hurt to be sure..."

"schizophrenia" - About 19,300,000 results (0.15 seconds)

**I took the result bit from Google after searching 'schizophrenia'. Kinda neat, huh?**


End file.
